Why, That’s Just Outlander-ish…

October 27, 2014

I don’t know if any of you have been watching the Starz TV series called “Outlander,” but I’m kind of hooked on it.  (Charming even likes to watch this show with me…most likely because it has a smattering of blood, gore, and killing in it to make it interesting enough to hold his attention for an hour.)

Anyway…the plot goes something like this…In 1945, after being separated by war for several years an English nurse named Claire takes a trip with her husband to Scotland to get reacquainted after so many years of being apart.  During the trip, Claire touches some big stones at a place called Craigh na Dun (sounds like Craig-na-dune) and is transported back in time to 1743 Scotland.  Although she makes several attempts to get back to Craigh na Dun, thinking that she can figure out a way to again touch the stones and be transported back to the future, she gets caught up in the Scottish rebellion against England and ends up married to a young, red haired, muscular, Scottish (cute as a button) rebel named Jamie Fraser.  The last scene in the season finale has Claire about to be abused by an English officer (who just happens to be her English husband’s ancestor, Black Jack Randall) when cutie-pie Jamie comes crashing through the window and says in his heavy Scottish accent, “I’ll thank you to take your hands off my wife!”

As much as one might think the cute Scot Jamie would make me swoon, that’s not the real reason I watch the show.  As silly as it may seem, I’m fascinated by the shawls and scarves that Claire wears during the show.  In the last couple of episodes, she wore the most adorable little cape/shawl kind of thing.  They’re sort of rustic items, but at the same time they are charming.  Aaaaaaaaahhhhh….I guess I was born in the wrong century.  Even though I don’t live in the 1700’s, I do live in an area of the country that gets cold during the winter.  So, today I started a fairly plain knitted shawl that I think will help chase the chill away and hold me over until the new season of Outlander starts in 2015.

I wanted to make the shawl out of super bulky yarn, which is lofty (light and airy) and soft.  I also wanted a color that would go with jeans since that is what I tend to live in during the fall and winter.  Because there aren’t many yarn stores in my area, I went to Walmart and found something that I think will work well.  It’s Lion Brand super bulky Hometown USA in San Diego Navy.  I started knitting the shawl today and found that I really like the drape and feel of the yarn.  It is also fairly easy to knit, considering I’m using gigantic size 18.5 straight knitting needles.

My pattern is simple.  I just cast on 29 stitches and work in the seed stitch (knit 1, purl 1) for the entire thing.  I’ll just make it as long as it needs to be in order to wrap around my body and shoulders comfortably.  Although it is awkward knitting with the big needles and big yarn, progress is really fast.  I only spent about an hour on this and I’ve already gotten a foot completed.  After I get the shawl completed, I may crochet around the entire outside edge to give it a finished look.  At the rate of knitting a foot per hour with big needles and super bulky yarn, this project can be completed in just a few days!  

Lion Brand "Hometown USA Super Bulky" yarn in "San Diego Navy".
At $2.97/skein, it's a great deal!  (I purchased 7 skeins...all that they had
in stock of this color.  I can simply return any unused skeins.)

Here, I'm trying to show you how thick and lofty the yarn is (the
knitting needles are plastic, size 18.5, that I got for three bucks at
the Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival in September)

This is the first foot of the shawl, viewed vertically.  Made in a simple seed stitch
(knit 1, purl 1) pattern, it's a great project if you just have a few spare
minutes to work on it.  If you have to stop knitting in the middle of a
row, you can easily see what your next stitch should be.

Here, the shawl is viewed horizontally as it would be viewed if it
were wrapped around your shoulders.  Note that the stitches appear
to form a diagonal/criss-cross type of stitch.  That's the beauty of the
simple seed stitch!

Just The Flax, Ma’am…

October 20, 2014

On Saturday, I took my regular early morning walk around the block with my sister and came home with a hankering for cinnamon raisin bagels.  So I decided to carve an hour or so out of my day in order to make a batch.  Now, anybody with gluten sensitivity knows that a decent gluten-free bagel…or any good gluten-free bread, in general…is as scarce as hen’s teeth.  However, months ago I set out to develop a bagel recipe of my own that was at least half way edible and wouldn’t fall apart during the boiling process.  After much trial and error, I’m happy to say that I’ve had some success.

Most bagel recipes are pretty much the same…mix some kind of flour, liquids, and some kind of leavening agent to make them rise then boil and bake them.  On my first few attempts, using published recipes from the internet, the bagels wouldn’t rise at all and always broke apart during the boiling process.  So I added an extra egg and more xanthan gum to keep them from breaking apart.  I also added all of the leavening agents I could think of…yeast, baking soda, and baking powder.  Though they were better, they broke apart during the boiling process.

Finally, I decided to add a tablespoon of milled flax to the recipe and that made a huge difference in the texture of the bagels.  I’ll be the first to say that my bagels are not like bagels you’d buy in a store, but they are edible.  My sister, who is also trying to go gluten-free, actually likes them and asks for some whenever I bake them.  I’m including the recipe under the “Gluten-Free Recipes” tab above.  If you ever get a chance to try this recipe, let me know how it works for you.

Since the “magic ingredient” in these bagels seems to be flax, I’ll give you a little back ground on that wonderful ingredient.  Flax is a food and fiber plant that grows in many countries all over the world.  (As it happens, I attended the Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival in late September this year and a lady was there demonstrating how to spin yarn from flax fiber.  She grows it on her farm in New Hampshire.)  Flax has been used for centuries as a fiber crop.  Once the fiber has been processed and spun into yarn, it is then called linen.  The yarn is initially somewhat stiff just after it is spun, but the more the garment is washed the softer it gets.  Flax plants also develop seeds which can be processed into flax meal and used in cooking.  In addition, the oil from the seeds is often used in many wood-finishing products.

There are many benefits in adding milled flax to your diet.  It is a good source of fiber and plant protein.  Flax is one of the richest plant sources for Omega-3 fatty acids.  Many doctors are now recommending that their patients add Omega-3’s to their diet to help fight heart disease.  Studies have also shown that flax is beneficial in preventing colon cancer and breast cancer. 

Flax can be added to many foods…bread dough, pie dough, pizza dough, smoothies, soups, stews, chili, oatmeal, meatloaf, casseroles, breading for fried chicken, and many more.  I have found that milled flax seed is especially useful in making gluten-free dough more flexible.  (Now I don’t spend so much time cussing the dough as I’m trying to move it from work surface to the pan.)

There are many plants that can individually be converted into either food or fiber or industrial solutions or medicine, but the flax plant can be converted into all of these products.  The flax plant, in my humble opinion, is one of the most useful plants in all of nature. 

Milled flax seed.  I had to put it into a zip freezer bag because
"Mountain Woman" (me) opened the bag with a little more
force than was really necessary...and, yes, it did spill on the floor.

The front of the flax bag (purchased from Costco
in the bulk size).

The back of the bag, explaining the benefits
of flax.  (1 serving of flax = 2 tablespoons, 70 calories)

The bagel-making process...raw dough (shown on the right), boiling
the bagels three at a time (in the middle), and ready to go to the oven
on the baking sheet (on the left).

Fully baked (nice and brown) cinnamon raisin bagels!

A quick shot of Jax snoozing in my chair...not sure, but I think he
likes his new home.

A Honey of a Deal...

October 13, 2014

Here in our neck of the Valley, it has been raining for most of the past three days.  Not pouring down rain, but enough to keep us inside.  This morning I woke up and got ready to step outside for a morning walk and it was (you guessed it) raining again.

Although I’m happy to see the rain after the dry summer, I wish it would’ve held off until after this holiday weekend.  Our county had its annual heritage festival and the attendance was down due to the weather.  I look forward to this yearly festival where my creativity gets re-charged by seeing all of the handicraft displays as well as the craft demonstrations. 

At the festival, I purchased some “raw” honey and some beeswax from a local vendor.  Other than the obvious “yum, yum factor” honey has many uses in my household.  In addition to using honey for making my face wipes (see my “Shine On” blog post from April 3, 2014), I drink a cup of what I like to call “honey tea” every morning before I eat breakfast.  Honey tea is a cup of hot water, a teaspoon of honey and about ¼ teaspoon of cinnamon.  I find that this brew, along with two fish oil capsules in with my daily dose of vitamins, helps to lessen some of the joint aches and pains that I’ve developed as I’ve grown older.  (I think I should note here that I am definitely not a medical professional and this is not an alternative to doctor-prescribed medication for joint pain; it’s just another “Swamp Witch Hattie” thing I do.) 

Honey also has natural anti-bacterial properties.  I often put a dab of honey on minor cuts or scrapes and cover the area with a Band-Aid.  This seems to make my scrapes heal faster. 

In my opinion, honey straight from the source, is one of God’s great gifts.  It has lots of practical uses around the house and tastes great with a dab of butter on a gluten-free biscuit!  

The ingredients for "honey tea"...cinnamon, raw honey, and
a cup of water.  (The yellow rectangle is a block of beeswax
that I bought when I purchased the honey.  I'll use that to make
plaintain ointment, which is good for minor cuts and skin irritations.)

My morning cup of honey tea.  I drink it down in just a couple
of gulps.  The taste is not something that you'd really want to
savor, so I drink it fast and move on with my day.

The Jewel Is In The Weed…

October 6, 2014

Have you ever heard of jewel weed?  It is a wild plant that grows in damp areas such as on the banks of rivers or in moist areas on the side of the road.  Jewel weed just happens to be nature’s antidote to poison ivy.

Jewel weed has a type of liquid/juice on the inside of its stems that resembles the consistency of the liquid in the aloe plant.  If you happen to catch poison ivy, you can simply break off the stems of the plant and rub it on your skin.  Since most people don’t have the time or the inclination to go searching the river banks or roadsides when they’re busy scratching their poison ivy, jewel weed soap is a good thing to keep on hand.

I made a batch of jewel weed soap about a month ago.  I drove the back roads in our county and found a patch growing along the river banks.  It was conveniently located at a spot where the river crossed under the road via a culvert so I didn’t even have to trespass on anyone’s land.  (Be careful if you decide to go looking for jewel weed during the summer months…it is often located right next to patches of poison ivy.  There are also snakes to worry about as well as road traffic, so be safe as you’re collecting your plants from the roadside.)  I stood by the side of the road and pulled a bunch of the stuff out by the roots…about a trash bag full…and took it home.  Jewel weed is propagated by seeds that pop open when they are mature, so there is no need to be concerned that pulling it out by the weeds will make it disappear from the landscape.  The plant drops its seeds and they easily root the following year.

In our back yard, I used the garden hose to hose off the roots and remove the debris that naturally gets stuck in the plants.  I then cut the plants up into pieces big enough to fit into the stainless steel cooking pot that I have dedicated to cooking up batches of “Swamp Witch Hattie potions,” as Charming calls them.  I covered the plants with distilled water and brought the pot up to temperature.  I let the plants simmer for about twenty minutes until the water turned an orange/brown color…sort of like tea, but not as dark. 

When making soap, I always wear latex gloves and eye protection as lye is used in the process.  I also keep a spray bottle of vinegar on hand in case the soap does splash on me.  Vinegar is supposed to cool the burn, although I have not yet had to put this to the test.  While there’s nothing to fear, if you are extremely careful, you must continually remind yourself not to let the stuff splash on you or the lye can burn your skin.  I use the following basic method to make the soap, but there are many different methods and ingredients that can be used.  Read over the instructions before you assemble your utensils and ingredients.  Then read your instructions again several times and visualize yourself performing each step.  This will make the process go much smoother and you won’t be so stressed about dealing with the lye/possible injury

Utensils that you will find useful:  a hand-held immersion blender (unless you’re fond of stirring for hours), a food scale, a wooden spoon, a (dedicated to soap-making) candy thermometer, a high-sided container to mix the soap in such as the removable crock from an old slow cooker, a bowl to mix the lye with the jewel weed tea, some sort of soap mold, towels or a blanket, a knife or some other type of blade to cut the soap with, a plastic mesh screen or something similar to rest the soap on after it has been cut.  Remember to weigh all ingredients on your food scale, subtracting the weight of the container that holds the ingredient or your soap may not turn out right!

Distilled Water 13.5 ounces (or jewelweed tea) – again, remember to subtract the weight of the container when you’re measuring.

Lard 40 ounces

Lye  5.4 ounces (be sure to measure in plastic container & wear gloves)

Essential oil or fragrance drops such as lavender or citrus, optional

I make soap outside where I don’t have to worry about ventilation.  I heat the lard to room temperature before going outside and pour it into the crock pot container.  Also, while the lard is heating up, I assemble my utensils in a box and then take everything outside to make the soap.  Using the glass bowl, add lye crystals to the jewel weed tea.  (Always add the lye to the liquid…NOT the liquid to the lye or you may suffer injuries.  The water will smoke & be hot, so do not touch the bowl until it has cooled down.) Stir with a wooden spoon until clear.  Cool to 100 degrees.  Slowly add jewel weed tea/lye mixture into lard bowl.  Mix with spoon and then with stick blender until trace.  (Trace is when the mixture starts to make “traces” when stirred with the spoon.  At this point, it will resemble the consistency of pudding. Do not over stir.)

Mix in essential/fragrance oil with the spoon. 

Pour soap into molds.  Cover top with cardboard.  Then cover with towels and/or blanket.

Let sit in place for 24 hours (in a dry and warm place…like a craft room).

Next day, remove soap from mold onto cutting mat and cut into bars.  Can trim edges with vegetable peeler to make uniform. 

All of this sounds a bit complicated until you actually do it.  Although it is probably cheaper to buy soap from the store, everyone should be aware of how soap is made…even if you never HAVE to make it, at least you’ll know HOW to make it.  

Jewel Weed...I pulled this plant from the river banks and then
transplanted it into a planter.  It will grow in a planter if you keep
it moist and sitting in a shady place.

This is jewel weed "tea"...I simmered the plants in distilled
water then strained the liquid into a plastic jug.

Cutting the bars of soap with a vegetable cutter after the soap
had set and hardened for 24 hours.

Lovely bars of jewel weed soap after they had been cut.  They
need at least three weeks of drying time before they can be used.
(It takes that long for the lye to de-activate.)

Falling Leaves and Saving Seeds

September 29, 2014

I’m back.  It took me a bit longer to get back to writing than I had originally thought it would.  The main reason for this is because it’s been a bit hard for me to even look at my blog as it’s chock-full of pictures of Max the Wonder Dog. 

On August 14^th, Charming and I had to make the extremely difficult decision to put our beloved Max to sleep.  As it turned out, Max had cancer and didn’t respond to treatment.  Since then both Charming and I have been a little out of sorts.  We found the adjustment so hard that, after the first couple of weeks of mourning, we both started trolling petfinder.com in a vain attempt to find another dog just like Max. 

Of course there can be no other dog like Max and both Charming and I realize that.  I think I now understand why, in the “olden days,” when a woman lost a child her friends and family would encourage her to have another child as soon as possible.  Although we all know fully well that you can’t substitute one child with another, Charming and I were open to the idea of trying to find another dog to fill up our time and immediate thoughts in hopes that we would be able to move forward.

So to make a long story short…a couple of weeks ago, we got another dog from a rescue group in Kentucky.  The pup is (by our vet’s best guess) a little more than a year old.  He is a lab-pit bull mix; the same as our dear Max.  He was in a high-kill shelter in Kentucky when he was rescued by the Bourbon County (Kentucky) Rescue League.  We arranged to “visit” with him when the rescue group made their regular trek to Petco in Germantown, Maryland.  (That was a two-hour drive for us, but it was an enriching experience to see so many dogs and cats find their “fur-ever homes”.)  Our new little guy is a bundle of energy who does take up quite a bit of our time and energy.  He looks a lot like our Max, but he’s much smaller and probably won’t weigh above 50 pounds when he reaches full maturity.  He has one lab ear and one pit bull ear, if you can believe that.  We’ve named him “Jax” and there are moments…like when he’s stretched out on my lap with his legs up in the air, waiting for a belly rub…that we realize that he is a true gift in his own right. 

Moving on…I have been busily canning up the remainder of the vegetables in our garden.  I’ve also been drying and saving seeds.  If you’re an avid gardener, working towards self-sufficiency, or a Prepper then you’re always planning for the future.  The seeds that I save from this season should be viable for the next two or three years.  Saving my own seeds allows me to start the seeds indoors, often before seeds and gardening paraphernalia even show up in the stores.  It also ensures that I get strong, healthy plants that are not genetically modified and have not been exposed to harmful pesticides.  I like to know what I’m eating.

Below are pictures of my seeds saving process as well the finished product, complete with my hand-made seed envelopes.

Dried Napa Cabbage and Large Bunching Onion seeds that
have been drying for about a month in a warm, well-ventilated
room in our house.

Seed packets that I designed, using the "draw" and graphics
features in my word processing application.  (I "drew" in lines
to make it easier to cut uniform lines and then folded and taped
the edges.)

Voila!  Seeds for my garden and extra for family members.

Our Jax is a bit camera shy, but...

I was finally able to snap a picture of him before
he got away.

Breaks Are Good...

August 11, 2014

Due to Max's illness, frequent visits to the vet, and trying to keep up with canning the bounty from my garden, I  need to take a break from blogging for a week or two.

Will hopefully be back by the end of August.  Take care and enjoy the rest of your summer!

I Wonder If This Ever Happens To Martha Stewart...

August 4, 2014

Last night I gathered some beautiful tomatoes out of our garden, in anticipation of making and canning spaghetti sauce today.  I washed, cored, and chopped the tomatoes and cooked them up so I could get a head start on my canning this morning.  Everything went according to plan.

This morning I got up at 6:30 a.m.  I fixed Charming’s breakfast, packed his lunch (he’s still helping my brother finish up a construction project), kissed him off to work (this closely resembled a Blondie and Dagwood Bumstead episode as I hustled him out the door while simultaneously giving him instructions and handing him his lunchbox, a towel for drying off in the mid-day heat, and two fresh t-shirts in case he feels the need to get out of his sweaty shirt).  I then fed Max the Wonder Dog, made the bed, washed the dishes, and took a quick walk with my sister who has just moved in down the street. 

Upon coming home, I began to prepare my spaghetti sauce.  I took the previously cooked tomatoes out of the fridge, ran them in batches through the blender, then through the Foley food mill, and finally dumped the pulp-thickened juice into the biggest pot I own.  This went along fairly quickly and I moved effortlessly around the kitchen, singing a happy song in my way-way-off-key I Love Lucy voice.  Cooking and canning are two things that make me happy, so I sing when I work.  My sister calls me “Martha Stewart, Jr.”

With the big pot of tomato sauce on the stove, I turned the heat to up to get the ball rolling.  Figuring I had a few spare minutes, I zipped to the bedroom for a big armload of laundry and headed for the laundry area in the basement.  Our black cat, Walker, was hot on my heels meow-ing all the way.  (He has been clingy and more needy than usual since our other kitty, Powder, ran away on June 1^st.)  After throwing the laundry into the washer, I glanced at Walker’s bowl and figured I had enough time to top it off since I was down there anyway.  Meow! Meow! Meow!  Ok, so it wasn’t fresh food that he wanted.  A brief thought about the sauce on the stove flitted through my mind, but I figured it would only take a few minutes to clean the litter box as well…Walker is pretty finicky about his litter box.  After I got that done and he seemed much happier.

I sprint back up the stairs; thinking that my sauce is happily bubbling away…which it was…away, away, away over the top of the pan and all over the stove!  YIKES!  I rushed to the sink and quickly wash my hands then raced to the stove and turned off the heat.  Tomato sauce was EVERYWHERE, so for the next 30 seconds, I said almost every swear word I could think of.  Then, because the heat and tomato sauce eruption was somewhat subsiding, I composed myself and simply started groaning…oh, no, No, NOOOOO…ohhhhh, no.  What’s a Martha to do? 

After several minutes of just standing in front of the stove and staring at the mess, I slowly walked to the sink, grabbed my Handi-wipe dishcloth and a mixing bowl of water with a squirt of dish detergent, then I mustered all the Queenly grace I could find.  I walked back to the stove and mopped, and mopped, and mopped.  In my mind, this is all that any Martha can do.

This is what happens when you try to do too many things at once.

The stove as it looked 2/3's of the way through clean up...yes,
it was much worse than this before I started cleaning it up.

Starting over...which proves you can sometimes screw up in life,
but start over with a clean slate.